April 13, 2011

Variation in four Central Anatolian settlements

I had linked to the conference versions of this work in ISABS 2007 and AAPA 2008. Now there is a new paper in American Anthropologist on the topic of variation in four Central Anatolian settlements with very different origins. As I've mentioned before, this is a great illustration of the problem of uncritically treating modern Anatolian Muslim samples as representatives of the Neolithic population, for at least two reasons:

Modern Anatolian Muslims are only a part of the recent population of Anatolia, with a great part of the Christian population exchanged, killed, or forced to leave.

Modern Anatolian Muslims are ethnically, linguistically and religiously heterogeneous, and many of them have historical memories of descent from elsewhere, e.g., the Balkans, the Caucasus, or Central Asia

So, I have always been skeptical of grand reconstructions of prehistory based on treating modern Anatolian Muslims as little modified descendants of the Neolithic population. I don't doubt that a great deal of their ancestry, averaged over broad scales, is Neolithic Anatolian, but extracting this ancestry from the mosaic of heterogeneous Muslim groups inhabiting the modern Republic of Turkey is no trivial task.

From the current paper, in support of point #1:

Even though the data from official Ottoman records and other sources such as local church accounts are contradictory (Charanis 1972; Vryonis 1986), it is clear that Greek and Armenian peoples comprised the majority, or at least a very sizeable minority, of the late-19th-century Anatolian population (Finkel 2005; Levy 2002; Shaw et al. 1976). Muslim Turkic and Kurdish groups from different ancestral clans and, more importantly, from different sects of Islam made up the largest remaining part of the population (Cahen 1968, 2001; Finkel 2005). Therefore, the population of the Ottoman Empire came from different ancestral backgrounds, lived together, and constructed communities based on their religious affiliations.

In support of point #2, the authors have studied the inhabitants of a Central Anatolian region:

We worked in four geographically proximate Central Anatolian settlements located southeast of Ankara (see Figure 1) to test the abovementioned hypotheses and elucidate the regional complexity of Anatolian population history. Because of the current political sensitivities concerning ethnic–religious identity in Turkey, especially those relating to the Alevis and Kurds, the names of the specific settlements we visited are not identified in this article. Instead, for the sake of clarity, pseudonyms are used. This region, which we refer to as “Yuksekyer,” was selected for the study because, based on oral traditions and available historical records, it is home to linguistically, ethnically, and religiously distinct groups that live in close geographic proximity to one another. To assess the possible regional, religious, and ethnic differentiation in Central Anatolia, we collected additional samples from a settlement from Kizilyer, another region located about 500 kilometers east of Yuksekyer, the inhabitants of which are predominantly Alevi Turks.

"Yuksekyer" is 2,500 sq. km in size, so it's quite small in the broader Anatolian context. Here are details on the studied settlements:

Merkez is the current political and bureaucratic center with about 6,500 inhabitants, making it the most populous settlement in the region (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2001). It was probably founded by Cerkez (Circassian) people who had migrated there from the Caucasus region in the 14th century.

...

The inhabitants of the oldest known settlement, Eskikoy, claim a pre-Ottoman Karaman ancestry that traces back to a Turkic population that occupied the Konya region during the 13th century (Finkel 2005). To date, no historical records that confirm the connection between Eskikoy and its putative Karaman origin have been found. However, Ottoman records mention the presence of the Eskikoy settlement in the Yuksekyer region and place its foundation at around 1500 C.E.

...

The residents of Gocmenkoy identify themselves with the Afsar clan of the Oguz tribe, to which the Kayi and Turkmen lineages also belong (Cahen 1968). Their oral history, supported by local historical records, indicates that these people came from Central Asia in the 16th century.

...

The Kurdish-speaking inhabitants of Dogukoy were the last immigrants to populate Yuksekyer. They purportedly came into the region around 200 years ago from southeastern Turkey.

...

For comparative purposes, we also collected 30 additional samples from another Central Anatolian region, Kizilyer, which lies about 500 kilometers east of Yuksekyer. This region is roughly comparable to Yuksekyer region in its size and population density.

There are a lot of interesting genetic data, but I will focus on the Y-haplogroup profiles of the different populations:

A few things stand out:

Haplogroup L is limited to Gocmenkoy. L is divided into informative subclades and is one of the less studied and more mysterious Caucasoid haplogroups; the authors erroneously state that it is more frequent in East Eurasians. In the Gocmenkoy sample it could very well be the legacy of Turkicized Central Asian Iranian speakers in which it is found at a high frequency. Most of the haplogroup Q is also found in Gocmenkoy and this may represent a genuine Turkic element.

Haplogroup J1 is largely limited to Merkez; this is not surprising as Merkez is said to have been founded by Circassians, and J1 occurs at a substantial frequency in parts of the Caucasus

Haplogroup N is mostly found in Eskikoy, and this is also a likely marker of Central Asian Turkic groups

I find the high frequency of J2a (64.5%) in Dogukoy, the Kurdish settlement to be noteworthy. This haplogroup is also probably found at a high frequency in Parsis (although technically only J was studied in the relevant study), and I've noted before that a high J2/J1 ratio contrasts West Asian Indo-Europeans from Semitic groups. J2a also occurs at a high frequency in Indian upper caste populations, whereas it is virtually absent in low castes and tribals.

The fact that the names of the settlements had to be obfuscated by the authors speaks volumes about the political sensitivity of the subject. Hopefully this line of research will be allowed to continue.

ABSTRACTPrevious population genetics studies in Turkey failed to delineate recent historical and social factors that shaped Anatolian cultural and genetic diversity at the local level. To address this shortcoming, we conducted focused ethnohistorical fieldwork and screened biological samples collected from the Yuksekyer region for mitochondrial, Y chromosome, and autosomal markers and then analyzed the data within an ethnohistorical context. Our results revealed that, at the village level, paternal genetic diversity is structured among settlements, whereas maternal genetic diversity is distributed more homogenously, reflecting the strong patrilineal cultural traditions that transcend larger ethnic and religious structures. Local ancestries and origin myths, rather than ethnic or religious affiliations, delineate the social boundaries and projected identities among the villages. Therefore, we conclude that broad, ethnicity-based sampling is inadequate to capture the genetic signatures of recent social and historical dynamics, which have had a profound influence on contemporary genetic and cultural regional diversity.

22 comments:

I agree with your criticism of using extant lineages in Anatolia to make inferences to migrations out of Anatolia in the distant past. I have voiced my strong disappointment of, e.g., Haak's paper's logic and analysis before.

mtDNA information would have been useful. In suppl. Table 3 it says: "Mitochondrial DNA HVSI sequences in Yuksekyer and Kizilyer Settlements and estimated haplogroup assignment" - but I can't see any haplogroup assignments.

When will we see results from ancient DNA in Anatolia? I realize preservation conditions aren't the best, but mtDNA is usually relatively easy to retrieve.

Efxaristo poli mr Dienekes for many recent interesting papers (some of my comments yesterday-I guess for technical reasons-were not posted) I think most of the muslims of Turkey descend from Armenians and Greeks that adopted Islam this could be traced very well in early ottoman population records where there are mention of local christians adopting islam and very common arabic names (thousands of men having the same ahmed or abdullah names) in exchange of being exempt of taxes as well as being given lands.btw Q hg seems to be yenisseian rather than Altaic and I think not all subclades of Q are mongoloid, the same as not all sub-clades of E are caucasoid and not all the sub-clades of C being mongoloid (see for example arabian C5+C hg is said to be of southwest or south asian origin)Please see belowPossible place of origin South Asia or Middle East http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_C_(Y-DNA)

Q hg as well is either south asian either central asian=>yenisseian not altaic or uralic (altaic homeland should be located around manchuria, turkic homeland around lena river and uralic homeland around the ob river) please see the paper belowhttp://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=108396

Solid points. The knowledge that Central Asian Turks left far less of a genetic impact than they did a linguistic and cultural impact often obscures the fact that there is a lot more going on in the recent population history of Anatolia.

The reference to Ottoman records is particularly informative, and the willingness of the researchers to look at the documented historical records about where populations came from, at least for use as Baysean priors in evaluating the data, deserves praise.

One would think that the population exchanges and exiles of Greek and Armenian populations would be recent enough that one could estimate the genetic composition of these populations pretty accurately by looking at the genetics of their descendants, and that one could estimate what proportion of the population shifted in different places from Ottoman records, historical population exchange and refugee documentation and the historical work that has been done on the Armenian genocide.

The difficulty with peeling off layers, however, is that there are so many layers making such substantial contributions that it is hard to put much faith in the residual as being reliable. There are reasonable arguments to attribute almost of all the Y-DNA hgs but J2a and perhaps E3b to later migrations into Anatolia.

These groups also omit some really important known layers before them that produced mass population relocations such as the wars between the Byzantine and Muslim forces over hundreds of years in the first millenium CE, and the Indo-European influx into the region as Greeks filled the vacuum left when the Hittite empire collapsed ca. 1200 BCE (and during Hittite reign as well).

Absent ancient DNA from the region to give us clues, I don't know that anyone can offer a very definitive answer. LBK Neolithic ancient DNA may be the best available proxy for what ancient Anatolian gene pools looked like that we may ever get, as problematic as they are as a proxy.

Apart from ancient DNA, mtDNA ought to be more similar to ancient Anatolian mixes than Y-DNA because some of the waves of migration into Anatolia were probably male dominated. This is particularly true to the extent that mtDNA signals are shared by ethnically different populations.

I am an Englishman living in Slovakia, but when I was a student I spent a lot of time studying the history and archaeology of Greece and Turkey. I travelled extensively in both countries and made rather unsuccessful efforts to learn both languages. As a result I am always especially interested in information on the genetics of this region. I am well aware of the problems mentioned by Dienekes. In the present case I was pleased to find that the article and its supplementary information are accessible without payment. I quickly noticed a number of test results placed in y-haplogroup I1, a group usually associated with Western, Central and Northern Europe rather than with Turkey. When I opened the file of supplementary information I found the paternal STR haplotype D21, supposedly belonging to “I1b2” and compared it with my collection of y haplotypes derived from Ysearch. I soon found that D21 has DYS437=14, while my examples of I1 had mostly 16, sometimes 15 or 17 but never 14 for 437. The figures for 390, 392, 393 and 438 are also different from those usual in I1. Then I turned to Athey’s haplogroup predictor and got an identification of D21 as “I2b1” with 92.2% probability. I2b1 is also a mainly European haplogroup, but the Armenian DNA project at familytreedna has two examples of “I2b1c* P78+”. I think the range of STRs given is not very good for identifying haplogroups. It is a pity they did not use the same range as in the recent study on the Smyrna-Izmir region. It is also regrettable that, as in so many papers, they only identify the main groups. These groups usually have important subdivisions, which may make a big difference to the interpretation. For example, it would be interesting to know whether the examples of J1 belong to the mainly Caucasian group with DYS388=13, 436=11, 490=13, or to the mainly Semitic group with 388=16, 436=12, 490=12.

R1b1a2 (2011) - that is, its Anatolian branch, L23*, not the European one (L23, L150)- seems also autochthonous, unless it originated in the Balkans and migrated to Anatolia very early on.

Your comments about I, in particular I2b1, are very interesting. Some of the I usually associated with central and northern Europe could be of historic origin (Celts, Vikings, etc.), but some of it could be from much earlier back-migrations into Anatolia, perhaps with introduction of IE there (from the Balkans, in my view, supported by the closeness of Greek and Armenian, among other reasons).

I strongly disagree ; it2s like stating that magyars did make an important cultural (and to some extent linguistic) impact on pannonians, the culture as well as the cultural words used by pannonians are most times -repectively- european and indo-european it's the same for anatolia wich conserved to a great extent its original pre Altaic culture and most cultural words in Turkish (as well as all conjunctions+literary styles+even basic words such as jiger/liver from iranic, mide/stomach from arabic, ev/house from aramaic, iki/two from iranic, besh/five from iranic and possibly also men,ben/I from iranic) are either indo-european either semitic and the semitic+indo-european vocabulary well outnumbers altaic words especially before the language "purification" laws.

""in a smaller group of languages conquerors of "low" cultural level have conquered higher civilizations.In most of such cases the conquerors are culturally and linguistically absorbed. In at least two, however, Hungarian and Turkish the conquerors have kept their basic linguistic structure and basic vocabulary, while taking on the lexicon of higher culture from conquered or neighboring peoples. But both Hungarian and Turkish retained their military vocabulary"

"typically, the context for such changes is the imposition of colonizing language on a politically or socially subordinate but numerically larger population. Let me illustrate this schematically:Generation 1:Monolingual speakers of the native language X and incomers speaking language Y, each possibly with a passive knowledge of the other language.Generation 2: At least one group becomes bilingual.The speakers of X speak their own language natively and Y with an X accent (and structure) and the Ys speak their own language natively and possibly X with a Y accent (and structure)Generation 3: Everyone speaks Y and X is dead.Two discernable accents, X and Y still exist.Generation 4:Y speakers with an X accent become dominant (possibly because of greater numbers), and this prounciation becomes standard among the whole population. "

Relying on the frequency of haplogroups in modern populations as indicators of the composition and ethnic structure of past populations is as futile and illogical as using present day Anatolian Turks or even modern Assyrians as indicators of Neolithic populations present in Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus. Haplogroups thrive, increase exponentially or suddenly become extinct for whatever chaotic reasons you can think of, and have done since the beginning of humanity. Using present day populations as templates for the bygone days of yore doesn't work. Studying dynastic families or the frequencies of certain surnames since surnames became fixed and hereditary will prove that even in the short term, the Middle Ages for surnames or the present "British" Royal family will show you quickly how futile your extrapolations into the past can be using haplogroups.

I have been corresponding with Mr. Omer Gokcumen, the lead author of this study, for some years, and I have important first hand knowledge about his Anatolian studies and especially the relevant Central Anatolian study (which is actually much broader in scope than the five settlements covered in the published version) that I would like to share, which, I believe, will greatly contribute to the public understanding of the study results. To this aim, I am going to quote Mr. Gokcumen's relevant writings in our correspondences by translating them verbatim from Turkish to English (I have got permission from him to do so).

Dienekes quoted this paragraph from the paper:

"Even though the data from official Ottoman records and other sources such as local church accounts are contradictory (Charanis 1972; Vryonis 1986), it is clear that Greek and Armenian peoples comprised the majority, or at least a very sizeable minority, of the late-19th-century Anatolian population (Finkel 2005; Levy 2002; Shaw et al. 1976). Muslim Turkic and Kurdish groups from different ancestral clans and, more importantly, from different sects of Islam made up the largest remaining part of the population (Cahen 1968, 2001; Finkel 2005). Therefore, the population of the Ottoman Empire came from different ancestral backgrounds, lived together, and constructed communities based on their religious affiliations."

To the first sentence of the paragraph I objected so:

"I have an objection to this sentence. Greeks and Armenians didn't comprise the majority in 19th century Anatolia, they were conspicuously in minority. Turkish speaking Muslims, which we call Turk today, were conspicuously in majority in Anatolia. This was so not only during the 19th century and after but also even in the earliest (15th century) extant Islamic era population records (e.g., tahrir records) about Anatolia (of course, information regarding the languages Muslims spoke then is much more limited)."

Mr. Gokcumen replied to my this objection so:

"True. The point I was trying to make was stating that many non-"Turkish" groups lived in Turkey during the 19th century. Even though this is clear to you or me, many readers would have no knowledge about this topic. But, as you said, information is limited, that is why I framed an ambiguous sentence. Worse still, the studies regarding Anatolia [he obviously means the demographic studies O] mostly use foreign sources and especially Greek and Armenian sources... So we have no tool other than guessing how biased the researchers are."

As for why he chose "Gocmenkoy" (he uses pseudonyms for place names, including "Yuksekyer", due to political reasons) from among many other places he researched for inclusion in his published paper, he stated these:

"I researched about 10-15 regions [he means in Turkey O]... Of these regions, we managed to genetically analyze only some of them (two regions). Among the villages in these regions, Gocmenkoy is in a very incongrous situation. I mean, only in one [he means Gocmenkoy O] of the about 10 villages, we observed such an intense Inner Asian effect."

Regarding mtDNA haplogroups in the studied areas in Anatolia, we had such a conversation:

I wrote:

"Maternal origins cannot be distinguished between villages and even in the case of ethnic or religious differences, right?"

Mr. Gokcumen replied:

"Yes."

Then I replied to this so:

"Then I guess on the maternal side every ethnic and/or religious group has a completely native (to Anatolia and nearby regions) genetic character."

Mr Gokcumen replied:

"Yes."

His this sentence pretty well sums up his conclusions from his genetic studies in Anatolia:

"I am again repeating myself but it seems to me that the genetic structure of Anatolian villages wasn't formed under the influence of big ethnic groups but of local/micro socio-historical dynamics."

There are many other important things he stated in our correspondences, but I have written too much.

Regarding Gocmenkoy I should state that as the vast majority of Turkic migrations to Anatolia happened during the Seljuq times so before the admixture of the Central Asian Turkic people with the Iranic natives of what is now Turkmenistan, which was Turkicized (including linguistic Turkicization) concomitantly with Anatolia, Turkic ancestors of the Gocmenkoy villagers, as 16th century thus post-Turkicization of what is now Turkmenistan arrivals to Anatolia, must be much more Central Asian Caucasoid admixed than the main wave (Seljuq era) of Central Asian Turkic migrants to Anatolia. That is why the villagers of Gocmenkoy have so much Caucasoid DNA, in addition to admixing with Anatolian locals mainly through matriline, despite having much more Central Asian origin and much less native Anatolian origin than the average Turk of Anatolia.

Modern Anatolian Muslims are ethnically, linguistically and religiously heterogeneous, and many of them have historical memories of descent from elsewhere, e.g., the Balkans, the Caucasus, or Central Asia

Most claims of descent among Anatolian and Balkan Turks are spurious, as they very often involve descent from medieval Anatolian Muslim royals like the Karamanids. Every claim of descent should be treated individually. For instance you mentioned:

"The residents of Gocmenkoy identify themselves with the Afsar clan of the Oguz tribe, to which the Kayi and Turkmen lineages also belong (Cahen 1968). Their oral history, supported by local historical records, indicates that these people came from Central Asia in the 16th century."

According to their oral history the residents of Gocmenkoy are late comers to Anatolia and from the Afshar tribe of the Oghuz people, a Central Asian Turkic group and written Ottoman records confirm this and also their genetic results, which show that they have much more Central Asian origin than the average Turk of Anatolia.

"The Kurdish-speaking inhabitants of Dogukoy were the last immigrants to populate Yuksekyer. They purportedly came into the region around 200 years ago from southeastern Turkey."

They came very recently enough to preserve their Kurdish language and enough memory of their origins and and they still have contact with the place of their origin through occasional marriages.

"The inhabitants of the oldest known settlement, Eskikoy, claim a pre-Ottoman Karaman ancestry that traces back to a Turkic population that occupied the Konya region during the 13th century (Finkel 2005). To date, no historical records that confirm the connection between Eskikoy and its putative Karaman origin have been found. However, Ottoman records mention the presence of the Eskikoy settlement in the Yuksekyer region and place its foundation at around 1500 C.E."

This is a typical spurious claim of descent. Even if the residents of Eskikoy have some Turkic origin, that is very unlikely to be from the Karamanids, who were a small royal family that ruled a vast land in Central and South Anatolia during the medieval times. No historical record confirms their claim of descent and genetics points to only a small Turkic origin among them.

"I have an objection to this sentence. Greeks and Armenians didn't comprise the majority in 19th century Anatolia, they were conspicuously in minority. Turkish speaking Muslims, which we call Turk today, were conspicuously in majority in Anatolia. This was so not only during the 19th century and after but also even in the earliest (15th century) extant Islamic era population records (e.g., tahrir records) about Anatolia (of course, information regarding the languages Muslims spoke then is much more limited)."

It is well known that the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire experienced a demographic surge in the 19th century and the early 20th century.

Also, the Ottoman Empire did not count by language, but by religion, so your claim that "Turkish speaking Muslims" were in the majority is unfounded.

Personally, I would say that Muslims were probably in the majority during the 19th century in Anatolia, with a declining share of the population, but I see no evidence that Turkish-speaking Muslims were either in the majority or the minority, as the Ottomans did not count by language.

Indeed, I would say that the fact that the Turkish Republic launched a "Speak Turkish" campaign in its early years, at which time the great majority of its population was Muslim, strongly suggests that there was a sizeable portion of Ottoman Muslims who did not speak Turkish.

It is well known that the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire experienced a demographic surge in the 19th century and the early 20th century.

Yes, I am already aware of that demographic surge among Christians (mostly due to the improvement of their living conditions compared to Muslims during the 19th century). Thus Muslims had even a greater ratio in the Anatolian population before the 19th century.

Also, the Ottoman Empire did not count by language, but by religion, so your claim that "Turkish speaking Muslims" were in the majority is unfounded.

That is why I stated "of course, information regarding the languages Muslims spoke then is much more limited". But for the 19th century and early 20th century, we have enough Western contemporary reports about how big the Turkish speaking population of Anatolia was (of course, by the 19th century even even the Christian population of was Turkish-speaking in most parts of Anatolia, so that doesn't tell much about the origins of the Turkish-speaking Muslims).

Personally, I would say that Muslims were probably in the majority during the 19th century in Anatolia, with a declining share of the population, but I see no evidence that Turkish-speaking Muslims were either in the majority or the minority, as the Ottomans did not count by language.

According to the Ottoman censuses Muslims were in a big majority in Anatolia (vast majority in most parts of Anatolia) in the 19th century. Western contemporary reports not only confirm that, but also point out that a very big majority of the Muslims were Turkish-speaking in Anatolia west of Euphrates.

Indeed, I would say that the fact that the Turkish Republic launched a "Speak Turkish" campaign in its early years, at which time the great majority of its population was Muslim, strongly suggests that there was a sizeable portion of Ottoman Muslims who did not speak Turkish.

Its main target was the non-Turkish-speaking Muslim minorities west of Euphrates and, more importantly, Kurds, who predominantly lived east of Euphrates then and who had a much larger population than all non-Turkish and non-Kurdish speaking Muslims in Turkey.

Western observers never sorted all Anatolian Muslims by language. Also, many Ottoman citizens were bilingual in their native language and Turkish. Quite often, the language of the marketplace was Turkish, in the Ottoman Empire, while the language of the home or village was not.

While it's true that solid blocks of non-Turkish speaking Muslims existed in Kurdistan, there were also many others scattered throughout Anatolia.

Turkification largely took place as Muslims abandoned their own languages in favor of Turkish which most of the men already knew.

Turkification largely took place as Muslims abandoned their own languages in favor of Turkish which most of the men already knew.

Yes, but by the 19th century that process of Turkification had largely been completed among non-Kurdish speaking Muslims of Anatolia (the recent - 19th century - Circassian Muslim emigrants were of course an exception to this rule).

Linguistic information about Anatolia was of course limited during the 19th century compared to today, but still there is much relevant information in 19th and early 20th century Western encyclopedias.

There are many haplotypes found among Kurdish in Merkez and which are matching with Haplogroup J2a-L192.2J2-L192.2is a subgroup of J2a,L24,L25,F3133,Z7704and has an interesting and wide geographic spread.

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